How to conquer a territory - quickly

In my current campaign I am playing the Scots in the High Age on Expert difficulty. After some grueling battles and the arrival of William Walys, a natural 5 or 6 Command General I had conquered britain and invaded mainland europe along the french coast to try and take the steam out of a rampaging French empire.

A series of difficult battles followed, as my forces battled with the French garrisions and relief troops. Years passed and slowly French territories sucumbed to sieges and fell. I quickly dsicovered the same thing many others will have. A huge stack of troops is great to take a teritory, but rapidly gets dilluted while trying to defend your recent acquisitions.

this leaves the invader with two choices:

1. Leaving a skeleton crew to keep the populace under control and taking the bulk of your army off to continue the invasion.

2. Stopping and waiting to build up a few more troops from the conquered province to act as it's garrison.

If you take path 1: You risk losing the teritory you just gained, as your main army is tied up with a siege elsewhere and the enemy can focus it's forces where you are weakest while you siege their castle. Unless you split your forces up, making both groups weaker, and one bereft of good leadership you are vulnerable.

If you take path 2: Your invasion moves at snails pace and the defender has plenty of time to gather his forces to repel you. You lose the momentum of your surprise invasion.

Now, tot the point of the thread:

While conquering France, I noticed their King was in a bordering province, with only moderate defenses. I invaded the area with a large portion of my army, and viola! They abandoned the province without a fight! I took their teritory just like that, not a drop of blood spilled! Normally they'd fight, or retreat to the stronghold to force a siege and keep me tied up.

That was when I realised why they didn't do that, their King would be trapped in the castle under siege! Knowing they'd lose a battle, and unable to retreat to the castle for fear of their king being trapped, they simply gave me the province!

Shortly thereafter, my treacherous allies, the Castile Leonese turned on me and invaded some of my lands. After repelling them, but losing one teritory I noticed their king was also nearby. I repaeated the same tactic, droping a large force into their Kings territory. They also abandoned the province without a fight. I'm thinking of playing a game of Catch the King, having my main army follow him from territory to territory until his forces gather sufficiently to make a stand, then call off the attack and consolidate my gains.

So there you have it, the best way to conquer groud quickly, without sieges and without having to storn the castle. Hunt the King, it effectively removes the "Retreat to your stronghold option".

True but,

1) you have to have an army the AI thinks it can't beat.

2) you can do this maybe once or twice in a row but no more. The point is to annex a few more regions that are defendable. A king probably won't retreat in such a way that your new borders will be as small as possible. Provinces deep in ennemy territory are nearly impossible to defend.

3) you'll probably end up facing a huge army when otherwise you could've fought the AI's forces piece meal. It may be what you're looking for but it sure isn't the easiest way.

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Originally Posted by Peasant Phill

you'll probably end up facing a huge army when otherwise you could've fought the AI's forces piece meal. It may be what you're looking for but it sure isn't the easiest way.

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I think that is the result that you should look for. Especially since after all those retreats the enemy king will have developped nice v&v. Forcing a enemy king that with very few stars or giving a morale penalty to lead the army is often a very good way to have the AI loose the benefit of its best generals.

Fighting their forces piecemeal and having your main army tied up in sieges allows the enemy to regroup and gather forces for a counter attack. Not to mention you are always attacking so have the disadvantage of unfavourable terain meaning you will take losses.

If they give up the province without a fight, you lose no men, are ready to rock and roll again next turn and force rapid losses on your opponent, making it hard for him to regroup.

It's more of an opportunity to exploit than an outright strategy though. Say you attack Aragon, which has the enemy king. Rather than risk losing the battle they abandon Aragorn and retreat to Castile.

Next turn starts with the King in Castile and you in Aragon. You promptly move your army into Castile chasing the king and move a bunch of troops in from other provinces to keep Aragon from rebelling.

You end the turn and watch as the King moves out of Castile into Leon and garrisons from other provinces flood into Castile to cover his retreat and they stand and fight.

From what I've found, it can be a very useful trick to pull now and then, but you can't rely on itto work effectively more than once.

Coincidentally, I'm now grinding the Castile Leonese into dust, having taken most of Iberia now. I've made peace with the French, who are suffereing repeated rebellions and have been fighting off the Golden Horde on their eastern border. They were eager for peace, but I'm weary of drawing troops away from my borders in case I invite a counter attack.

They are now sufficiently weakened that I don't have to immediately woory about them dominating the world which is lucky, because I need a chance to solidify my gains and rebuild my navy and trade empire.

For now I'm playing a holding game with the French, leaving my 8* General (and a good number of crack troops that I could really use in Iberia) to guard the border provinces. My main standing army is in Iberia, and while still quite sizable, it needs reinforcements to continue to press the advantage against the CL. They have about 4 provinces remaining to them, one of which is sealed off and isolated. the Crusader States are camped in Morocco and I'm weary of them. I can't afford for them to get involved and come after me as well.

It's a tense time....The XL mod has really proven itself to me, the complexity of the added factions and new units, plus unit restrictions on factions and added combat difficulty add new dimensions to the game.

I've just laid hands on a mercenary Naptha Catapult, can I cant wait to try it out and see what it does. Does it lob a Naptha grenade instead of a regular catapult shot? I've just had a rebellion in Navare so I guess I'll find out soon! stupid rebels, that's what you get for deserting your King.

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Does it lob a Naptha grenade instead of a regular catapult shot?

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:yes: :yes: :yes: - but a bit bigger, and far enough that they don't blow themselves to bits in the process :laugh4:

I quite enjoy the "naphthapult", especially once they're valoured up and start getting accurate - it can make a serious mess of massed Chivalric Sergeants :2thumbsup:

My only complaint is that it has/had the same uniticon as the regular catapults, so I made a mirror image one so I can tell which is which in battle :bow:

The King flees! The cry went up and the glory of the Holy Roman Empire was expanded. Amidst the clamour of the feast they never heard the thunder of hooves.

I took some quick gains using your method yesterday. Very lucrative for florins, but my armies became too dispersed, I lost all but one territory over the next fifteen turns as the Papacy army was concentrated into two territories. Curse those supply lines!

How about this. It will only work if you have a heck of a lot of money to spare. If invading France for instance from England, have more than one army. Have at least four, with one small unit (say 400 men) separate for each castle the enemy have. Those small units are attached to an army (not literally), and they travel with them into provinces.

You send the armies in different directions, forcing the enemy to spread their armies thinly. Once you defeat an army, you move on to the next province, while leaving the 400 man detachment to besiege the enemy fort. That way, your main army hasn't lost any men to stay behind and besiege, allowing your forces to keep the momentum of the invasion up.

Its a bit of a complicated explanation, so i'll try to shorten it down a bit:

Main Army: 2,000 men (example)
Traveling with that army: 2 detachments of 400 men (as separate armies)

Once the main army defeats the other main army, one of those detachments is left behind to continue the siege, while the other armies head off.

Wasn't there an exploit a while back where someone suggested making hordes of peasants to force an enemy to retreat to a single province, and then finish them off with a decent army?

I suppose that could work, but if the AI is intelligent enough, it will know that Order Foot Soldiers and cavalry stand a pretty good chance against peasants. But usually, they run away in the face of large armies. I suppose that is a good way of getting them to retreat multiple times, then when they are blocked in, just attack them with a following army.

Yes, you do have to be weary of over extending yourself. I'd really only recommend it to take one territory at a time. dump a huge army into the Kings territory, watch him flee and take the province, then settle in and build up some more forces and infrastructure. With luck, the enemy will attack to try and take the province back you you'll have the benefit of the terrain advantage so you can crush him.

Or you can do the English tactic that we used in the Hundred Years War, chevauchee I believe, I can't remember the exact spelling. Basically, it involved marching an army into a province, pillaging all you can, burn the whole lot to the ground and then retreat. When the enemy moves back in and rebuilds, repeat the tactic.

However, in Total War, a constant stalemate may promote a rebellion back home. I remember my Holy Roman - Almohad War, while the Navy succeeded at blockading Almohad ports and destroying their navy, on land it was a Stalemate. We exchanged the same three ex-French provinces over and over for about 25 years. My attempts at negotiating a peaceful settlement to the war had fallen on deaf ears, as the Almohads were not talking.

Eventually, the people were starting to get a bit pissed off with the prolonged war, the continual yearly recruitment and just sending them to the meat grinder and the re-appearing of Almohad ships and hunting single ship fleets down in the blockade. About eleven provinces on the continent, across France, the Empire's heartland and Hungary defected, as well as four provinces in the British Isles defected in an all-out civil war.

Coupled with the prolonged war against the Almohads, the re-emergence of the French, Hungarians and the English made it a Catholic on Catholic War. The Pope excommunicated me, and the Italians answered the call. This finally brought down the Empire. So be careful when fighting an extended war.

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Originally Posted by Musket

Or you can do the English tactic that we used in the Hundred Years War, chevauchee I believe, I can't remember the exact spelling. Basically, it involved marching an army into a province, pillaging all you can, burn the whole lot to the ground and then retreat. When the enemy moves back in and rebuilds, repeat the tactic.

However, in Total War, a constant stalemate may promote a rebellion back home. I remember my Holy Roman - Almohad War, while the Navy succeeded at blockading Almohad ports and destroying their navy, on land it was a Stalemate. We exchanged the same three ex-French provinces over and over for about 25 years. My attempts at negotiating a peaceful settlement to the war had fallen on deaf ears, as the Almohads were not talking.

Eventually, the people were starting to get a bit pissed off with the prolonged war, the continual yearly recruitment and just sending them to the meat grinder and the re-appearing of Almohad ships and hunting single ship fleets down in the blockade. About eleven provinces on the continent, across France, the Empire's heartland and Hungary defected, as well as four provinces in the British Isles defected in an all-out civil war.

Coupled with the prolonged war against the Almohads, the re-emergence of the French, Hungarians and the English made it a Catholic on Catholic War. The Pope excommunicated me, and the Italians answered the call. This finally brought down the Empire. So be careful when fighting an extended war.

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Interesting read...Thanks for the information...

Let me ask you though: What about a prolonged state of war? As in, you are "at war" with another faction however you are not actually engaging in combat...the status of "war" just exists.

How can one expect their populace to react to this sort of situation?

It's not really being a the state of war that causes civil wars, although role playing it can make the game more interesting. The real reason will be that you've lost 2 or more provinces in 1 year.