Byz, High, Expert

Just an afterthought: if the Sics and the Huns are at war with each other it is likely that one of them is ex-commed. If this is the case (check out the alliance information panel and look for the broken cross near their monarchs' names) it must be the Huns as the Sics still have their crusade anchored in Bulgaria (which is not possible for an ex-commed faction). So the ex-commed Huns must have a very shaky internal situation and a defeat may trigger a civil war or rebellions in their realm. If you can spare some of your troops to deal that blow in Bulgaria (having Const protected enough) you may succeed in overturning the Huns.
On the other hand you will have to fight the crusade as well so it may be worth waiting for the mentioned crusade to dwindle away.

That is a very good idea! Hopefully the horde will manage it for me though. I am clinging to Constantinople with an iron grip and the thought of moving enough troops away to tackle Bulgaria is anathema. I will soon have a Kiev/Lithuania border and will then begin my expidetionary forays into central Europe. That will get them if the horde doesn't first.

By the way, what's your spear situation? In the very fisrt post of this thread you anticipated this spear-starving, so how about it now? Any high class spear mercenaries in your armies?

Attachment 3375

Finally finished it. As far as I'm going anyway.


Gil,

I actually ran out of mercs pretty early. I'm guessing the neighboring castles had some effect. Probably a third of the way through high they just stopped appearing. I found some right near the end of the campaign in Hungary, which I had razed on a raid and the huns built an inn. Most of the neighboring provinces had changed hands repeatedly between the huns, horde, Sicilians and me so they were almost all knocked down to fort level.

I ended up building a few provinces up to citadel level just to get master spear and silver armor, or gold in the case of const. v1 Spearmen with silver armor and a reliquary for some morale stand up for a while if you put them in thick formations, say 6 deep or so. Long enough for some silver armor woodsmen to get around any nasty units and do their thing.

On edit: I didn't find that I needed tons of spears. I prefer that style of play but the AI doesn't build tons of horse, aside from the horde, and the huns a little. Once I got fighting the Sicilians, Germans, etc. it was mostly foot, and the Byz can deal with that fairly well with good tactics and some moraled and armored BI and VG.

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Originally Posted by RRMike

I actually ran out of mercs pretty early. I'm guessing the neighboring castles had some effect. Probably a third of the way through high they just stopped appearing.

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In case you don't know: the mercs appear more readily in the provinces with the fort (no higher level), a port, and a vicinity to any ongoing war. So if I'm interested in them I try to leave one (possibly more) province to meet those requirements (in my last campaign it was Trebizond, Croatia, Georgia, Normandy - those that don't have tradable goods in them which would necessitate teching up the castle to a higher level).
As for you picture, I assume that you quit the game taking the small victory. Well, I never do that - I don't rest until I have grabbed everything. And - you had Switzerland. It was a good chance to try to use Swiss halbs (and then Pikemen) in combination with the core Byz units. It would seem to me a shame to lose such an opportunity. But I expect you were tired of this very campaign. Well, have a rest and then... whither will your hunger of conquest take ye, weary warrior?

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Originally Posted by Gilrandir

In case you don't know: the mercs appear more readily in the provinces with the fort (no higher level), a port, and a vicinity to any ongoing war. So if I'm interested in them I try to leave one (possibly more) province to meet those requirements (in my last campaign it was Trebizond, Croatia, Georgia, Normandy - those that don't have tradable goods in them which would necessitate teching up the castle to a higher level).
As for you picture, I assume that you quit the game taking the small victory. Well, I never do that - I don't rest until I have grabbed everything. And - you had Switzerland. It was a good chance to try to use Swiss halbs (and then Pikemen) in combination with the core Byz units. It would seem to me a shame to lose such an opportunity. But I expect you were tired of this very campaign. Well, have a rest and then... whither will your hunger of conquest take ye, weary warrior?

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You know, I thought about the same thing. I had built 8-10 Swiss Halberds by the time the message popped up, and only got to use them in the attack on Swabia. Getting Switzerland was an interesting deal.

I finally got to a point where I had a few extra stacks, due to a shortening of my borders at Kiev/Lithuania, after the romp through the steppes and up into Finland to polish off the Russians, so I moved some stuff around to get three stacks in Bulgaria that I didn't really need. Then I just started moving one province per turn. If a king was there and gave me the castle when he retreated (Hungary), I burned everything to the ground but if not I'd just move on the next turn and let them have it back. Once I got to Switz. I just sat there while I built the necessary militia building and the HRE didn't have enough moxy to even contest this big surrounded army sitting in the middle of their empire.

Your Switzerland-aimed chevauchee inspired me. Probably I will use the same tactics with the same aim in one of my games.